you ...” the tall man began, and then faltered. He put one hand up to his head.
“Are you all right, sir?”
“Fireworks,” the tall man said. She told the police later on that she was quite sure that was what he said. Fireworks.
“Sir? Are you all right?”
“Headache,” he said. “Excuse me.” He tried to smile, but the effort did not improve his drawn, young-old face much.
“Would you like some aspirin? I have some.”
“No, thanks. It’ll pass.”
She wrote the tickets and told him he would arrive at New York’s Grand Central Station on January 6, at midafternoon.
“How much is that?”
She told him and added: “Will that be cash or charge, Mr. Smith?”
“Cash,” he said, and pulled it right out of his wallet—a whole handful of twenties and tens.
She counted it, gave him his change, his receipt, his tickets. “Your train leaves at 10:30 A.M., Mr. Smith,” she said. “Please be here and ready to entrain at 10:10.”
“All right,” he said. “Thank you.”
Bonnie gave him the big professional smile, but Mr. Smith was already turning away. His face was very pale, and to Bonnie he looked like a man who was in a great deal of pain.
She was very sure that he had said fireworks.
4
Elton Curry was a conductor on Amtrak’s Phoenix-Salt Lake run. The tall man appeared promptly at 10:00 A.M. on January 3, and Elton helped him up the steps and into the car because he was limping quite badly. He was carrying a rather old tartan traveling bag with scuffmarks and fraying edges in one hand. In the other hand he carried a brand-new cowhide attaché case. He carried the attaché case as if it were quite heavy.
“Can I help you with that, sir?” Elton asked, meaning the attaché case but it was the traveling bag that the passenger handed him, along with his ticket.
“No, I’ll take that when we’re underway, sir.”
“All right. Thank you.”
A very polite sort of fellow, Elton Curry told the FBI agents who questioned him later. And he tipped well.
5
January 6, 1979, was a gray, overcast day in New York—snow threatened but did not fall. George Clements’ taxi was parked in front of the Biltmore Hotel, across from Grand Central.
The door opened and a fellow with graying hair got in, moving carefully and a little painfully. He placed a traveling bag and an attaché case beside him on the seat, closed the door, then put his head back against the seat and closed his eyes for a moment, as if he was very, very tired.
“Where we goin, my friend?” George asked.
His fare looked at a slip of paper. “Port Authority Terminal,” he said.
George got going. “You look a little white around the gills, my friend. My brother-in-law looked like that when he was havin his gallstone attacks. You got stones?”
“No.”
“My brother-in-law, he says gallstones hurt worse than anything. Except maybe kidney stones. You know what I told him? I told him he was full of shit. Andy, I says, you’re a great guy, I love ya, but you’re full of shit. You ever had cancer, Andy? I says. I asks him that, you know, did he ever have cancer. I mean, everybody knows cancer’s the worst.” George took a long look in his rear-view mirror. “I’m asking you sincerely, my friend ... are you okay? Because, I’m telling you the truth, you look like death warmed over.”
The passenger answered, “I’m fine. I was ... thinking of another taxi ride. Several years ago.”
“Oh, right,” George said sagely, exactly as if he knew what the man was talking about. Well, New York was full of kooks, there was no denying that. And after this brief pause for reflection, he went on talking about his brother-in-law.
6
“Mommy, is that man sick?”
“Shhh.”
“Yeah, but is he?”
“Danny, be quiet.”
She smiled at the man on the other side of the Greyhound’s aisle, an apologetic, kids-will-say-anything-won’t-they smile, but the man appeared not to have heard. The poor guy did look sick. Danny was only four, but he was right about that. The man was looking listlessly out at the snow that had begun to fall shortly after they crossed the Connecticut state line. He was much too pale, much too thin, and there was a hideous Frankenstein scar running up out of his coat collar to just under his jaw. It was as if someone had tried taking his head clean off at sometime in the not-too-distant past—tried and almost succeeded.
The Greyhound was on its way to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and they would arrive at